From copies of posts to XML-DEV
Given the recent, excellent discussion of web services, RDF and
the "semantic web" about these parts, I thought there might be some
interest in my articles on the new WSDL spec. In one of them I show how
RDF can be used to make WSDL descriptions more immediately practical. In
another I confuse people by insisting on trying to shoehorn the issue of
semantics into the category of Web services initiatives (ha!).
Do have a look and pass comment:
http://www-4.ibm.com/software/developer/library/ws-soap/index.html?dwzone=ws
Web Services Description Language (WDSL) is a new specification to
describe networked XML-based services. It provides a simple way for
service providers to describe the basic format of requests to their
systems regardless of the underlying protocol (such as Simple Object
Access Protocol or XML) or encoding (such as Multipurpose Internet
Messaging Extensions). WSDL is a key part of the effort of the Universal
Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI) initiative to provide
directories and descriptions of such on-line services for electronic
business. This article provides a brief background and technical
introduction to WSDL. Knowledge of XML and XML Namespaces is required and
some familiarity with XML Schemas and SOAP is useful.
http://www-4.ibm.com/software/developer/library/ws-rdf/index.html?dwzone=ws
The Resource Description Framework is the World Wide Web Consortium's
official format for defining the metadata of XML objects. Conceptually, it
is similar to Web Services Description Language, which is a collection of
metadata about XML-based services. This article focuses on building a
bridge between the two specifications. It provides an example of what a
Web service description might look like as an RDF file. It then goes on to
discuss how to take advantage of an RDF visualization tool to generate a
graph of the WSDL data. Finally, it presents a portion of a possible RDF
Schema for WSDL.
Note that there will be a third article on processing WSDL with XSLT coming
soon, probably a week from now. In it I present a transform that can convert
from the "pure" WSDL format to the RDF format.
If you're interested, keep an eye on the IBM developerWorks Web Services
Zone:
http://www.ibm.com/developer/webservices/
--
Uche Ogbuji Principal Consultant
uche.ogbuji@fourthought.com +1 303 583 9900 x 101
Fourthought, Inc. http://Fourthought.com
4735 East Walnut St, Ste. C, Boulder, CO 80301-2537, USA
Software-engineering, knowledge-management, XML, CORBA, Linux, Python